STORAGE OF FRUIT 357 



experimental refrigeration by mechanical means was ac- 

 complished as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 but no successful conmiercial application of cold storage was 

 evolved until after the invention of Lowe's carbonic acid 

 machine in 1867. The present growth of the industiy, how- 

 ever, is due to the invention of the ammonia compression 

 machine by Carl Linde in 1875. The process was first ex- 

 tensively applied to the preservation of meats, fish, and the 

 like, but as early as 1881 the Mechanical Refrigerating Com- 

 pany of Boston opened a cold-storage warehouse, which 

 marks the beginning of mechanical refrigeration as applied to 

 horticultural products. 



The use of natural ice for refrigerating purposes does not 

 seem to have come into general use until comparatively 

 modern times. The first large ice-house for the storage of 

 natural ice was built in 1805. At first the ice was packed 

 about the articles to be preserved, much as is done at present 

 in shipping fish and oysters. Later a chest or box was used 

 in which the ice was stored in one end and the products in 

 the other, but such an arrangement lacked any means for 

 securing a circulation of air. Later improvements in the 

 design of storage-rooms called for the storage of the ice over- 

 head with shafts allowing for a circulation of air, which 

 added greatly to the success of this type of refrigeration. 



323. Types of storage. — As can be inferred from the fore- 

 going, there are two general types or systems of storage: 

 (1) common, and (2) cold storage. The common, or non- 

 refrigeration storage, refers to some system by which reason- 

 ably low temperatures can be maintained, either by locating 

 the rooms in a cellar, thus utilizing the low natural tempera- 

 ture of the earth, or by the use of air currents to keep a room 

 at the temperature of the out-door air. 



The cold storage has been evolved from the early efforts 

 at refrigeration and involves the cooling of the storage-rooms 



